Onva Digital News Release

Introducing ExaGrid – reducing the cost of disk-based backup with data de-duplication

ExaGrid Systems Inc. is a privately owned Massachusetts based business that has been growing at a rate of 35% quarter-on-quarter since Q4, 2005. It expanded into Europe in December 2007, led by EMEA sales director, Andy Palmer. ExaGrid sells the fastest, highest-performance and most scalable disk-based backup system with data de-duplication available in the world today.  This year, ExaGrid has expanded its product capabilities with the world’s first de-duplication gateway for iSCSI storage²; as well as the industry’s first 30TB disk-based backup system with data de-duplication and a scalable GRID architecture. This product enhancement allows customers to store a 30TB full back-up, plus weeks or months of retention, in a single high-performance GRID system. As a result Exagrid can offer significant cost and productivity advantages over traditional tape and disk-based backup systems.

Exagrid sells through a value-added channel and has recruited more than 25 new channel partners worldwide¹ in Q2 2008. The company lists customers in key industries such as healthcare, legal, engineering services, manufacturing, oil & gas, education and government/local government including Conwy & Denbighshire NHS Trust, Hitachi Consulting, Kawasaki and Moto, the leading motorway service area provider in the UK.

Reshaping the disk storage market

ExaGrid customer, Adventist Health, spoke at the recent Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Management Summit, and discussed its implementation of ExaGrid’s disk-based backup with data de-duplication solution as part of the “Experiences with Data De-duplication Solutions” end-user case study session. Gartner has named ExaGrid in its “Cool Vendors in Data Protection, 2008” list as part of its recent report authored by Dave Russell and John P. Morency.

ExaGrid has a long-term strategy of establishing joint sales and marketing partnerships with backup software and industry leaders that now include DELL, Symantec, CommVault and Vizioncore. 

The issues – cost, time, security – all addressed and enhanced

In today’s demanding financial climate, businesses must do all they can to manage budgets efficiently. ExaGrid’s system enables customers to make their technology assets work harder, faster and more cost-effectively. It also enables greater personal productivity, enhanced service and responsiveness – just some of the qualities required to survive the credit crunch.

The standard storage system for large amount of data continues to be tape-based back-up applications, with lengthy nightly backups that include historic data as well as new amendments. As data amounts have grown, the standard disk-based storage systems have proved prohibitively expensive and too large and time-consuming to backup over a Wide Area Network.  Exagrid has solved these issues.

As ExaGrid is new to Europe and to the UK, we believe that many companies will be interested in finding out about an attractive alternative to unreliable and slow tape-based backup. ExaGrid’s GRID architecture enables easy scalability so that the system can grow as a company’s backup requirements increase.   

Customer benefits have knock-on advantages

Exagrid provides a number of powerful benefits including:

•  Enhanced service levels – When compared to traditional tape-based backups, as well as slower, disk-based systems, ExaGrid’s system offers a potential for improvement in 24-hour customer service levels. The storage of dynamic data with de-duplication ensures that staff have fast access to the most reliable information, rather than being hindered for hours by a system that is off-line during a lengthy backup process.
• Access to more reliable customer/patient information – In modern organisations where on-screen networked data is replacing hard copy documents (such as in hospital X-ray departments), ExaGrid’s technology means that people can rely confidently on fast access to reliable and up-to-date system data, including patient care details, thus enhancing patient care.
• Lower carbon emissions – By offering a cost-effective and fast alternative to tape-based backup, the ExaGrid system offers companies a new way to reduce their carbon footprint – saving hardware storage space and giving a shorter backup window that utilises less power.

The UK Information Office of ExaGrid is now open during normal office hours for:-

•  Briefings with senior executives such as Andy Palmer, Sales Director, EMEA, who can provide ‘from the coal face’ expert views and commentary, on the whole subject of data storage, including historic methods of storage, the benefits and disadvantages of different technologies and storage methods.  
• Discussions with ExaGrid senior spokespeople about future industry trends and how ExaGrid plans to develop its presence further in the global market place.
• Direct access to customers in Europe and the UK who have experienced real returns in terms of reduced staff time spent on backups, reduced outlay and improved ease of data restoration.
• White papers and Webcasts expanding on the technology behind the time-saving solution.

As part of a mutually productive relationship, we have added you to the ExaGrid information office database and will send you relevant company and customer announcements accordingly.  Please do contact us to discuss how we may assist you further.

Disk-based backup and de-duplication

De-duplication offers a solution to the day-to-day issues of efficiently backing up ever expanding amounts of data, as only changes to data are stored each time a backup is performed, rather than the whole data set in its entirety. ExaGrid’s unique answer to the problems is to offer a fast-speed transfer of backed up data from the company’s own backup application, into the ExaGrid server. From there, the system does a separate de-duping operation and then can export the data to be held off-site as required.  This approach means that some UK organisations have seen backup times drop by 60% or more. ExaGrid is four times faster than competitive offerings that tend to do the data transfer and de-duping at the same time resulting in slow backups. 

Uniquely, with the ExaGrid model, data is fully protected more quickly due to being transferred first to high speed disk and then processed for de-duplication afterwards. ExaGrid’s patented approach minimises the amount of data to be stored by providing standard data compression for the most recent backups along with byte-level data de-duplication technology for all previous backups. 

ExaGrid’s system enables faster restoring of data than competitive systems as it compresses data at a ratio of 2:1, with most restoring coming from the most recent back-up.

Footnotes

1. New worldwide partners in Q2 2008 are in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Benelux, the Nordics, and South Africa.  ExaGrid sells solely through a two-tier approach with value-added distributors and resellers.  The UK distributor is Zycko (UK) Ltd.
2. The ExaGrid iSCSI De-duplication Gateway™ has been tested with DELL® EquaLogic™ PS5000 Series iSCSI arrays to enable economical disk-based back-up solutions that are easy to deploy and manage.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.:
ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliance with data deduplication purpose-built for backup that leverages a unique architecture optimised for performance, scalability and price. ExaGrid is the only solution that combines compute with capacity and a unique landing zone to permanently shorten backup windows, eliminate expensive forklift upgrades, achieve the fastest full system restores and tape copies, and rapidly restore files, VMs and objects in minutes. With offices and distribution worldwide, ExaGrid has more than 6,500 systems installed at more than 1,700 customers, and more than 320 published customer success stories.

For more information, contact ExaGrid at 800-868-6985 or visit www.exagrid.com. Visit “ExaGrid’s Eye on Deduplication” blog: http://blog.exagrid.com/.

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ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.